As the recording capacity of disk-type recording media increases, video cameras storing moving images or still images on a disk instead of the known recording tape are commercially available. Since the disk-type recording medium is used in a random-access fashion, any desired scene can be efficiently found from recorded data. Since the disk-type recording medium operates in a non-contact fashion, data accessing to the disk is performed in a manner free from physical wear. For example, DVD video cameras are in widespread use because of ease of use, high image quality and editing features.
Apparatuses recording and playing high-vision data of high data quality, namely, HD (High-Definition) digital data have been developed and used.
An AVCDH format has been proposed as a latest HD data recording format. The AVCHD format is a format to be used to encode a moving image stream picked up by a video camera into an MPEG2-TS stream and record the encoded moving image stream. The AVCHD format has a layered data management structure.
In accordance with the AVCHD format, each of an index file (index), a movie object file (MovieObject), a play list file (PlayList), a clip information file (ClipInformation) and a clip AV stream file (ClipAVStream) is generated and recorded. The recording format is described in detail in the discussion of the present invention.
In the AVCHD format, actual data is recorded in the clip AV stream file (ClipAVStream) and management information corresponding to the actual data is recorded among attribute information files including the index file (index), the movie object file (MovieObject), the play list file (PlayList) and the clip information file (ClipInformation).
When one of the data editing process and the data playing process is performed on the recorded data subsequent to data recording, information required to start the editing process, the playing process, and the write-once recording process is read from each of these files. With required information is distributed among a plurality of files, accessing and reading the plurality of files need to be performed. It takes time to collect required information.